Blair Kills Kyoto at Clinton's Summit

UK PRime Minister Tony Blair stood on stage with Bill Clinton and announced that the UK will not be bound by the Kyoto Treaty on Global Warming. Why would Blair do such a thing? Because he does not want to send his country backward; he refuses to kill all economic development in the UK. James Pinkerton at TechCentralStation.com has the story:

"My thinking has changed in the past three or four years." So what does he think now? "No country," he declared, "is going to cut its growth." That is, no country is going to allow the Kyoto treaty, or any other such global-warming treaty, to crimp -- some say cripple -- its economy. Looking ahead to future climate-change negotiations, Blair said of such fast-growing countries as India and China, "They're not going to start negotiating another treaty like Kyoto." India and China, of course, weren't covered by Kyoto in the first place, which was one of the fatal flaws in the treaty.

The US Senate voted 95 to 0 to reject the Kyoto treaty if developing countries were excluded and they were. And he was looking to the future:

But now Blair is acknowledging the obvious: that after the current Kyoto treaty -- which the US never acceded to -- expires in 2012, there's not going to be another worldwide deal like it. So what will happen instead? Blair answered: "What countries will do is work together to develop the science and technology….There is no way that we are going to tackle this problem unless we develop the science and technology to do it." Bingo! That's what eco-realists have been saying all along, of course -- that the only feasible way to deal with the issue of greenhouse gases and global warming is through technological breakthroughs, not draconian cutbacks.

Now he's talking my language. Trying to promote growth instead of agreeing to quotas that can only be met by shutting down industry and requiring people to stop driving. Rather, let's work on technology that can reduce the emissions we are concerned about. Isn't it fitting that Blair did it at the conference Bill Clinton put on to showcase himself and Hillary? Pinkerton says that major media didn't cover Blair's statement, so it seems to be a TCS exclusive - by default. But soon everyone will know it.